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Chief Nyamweya — transcript

Pungulu Pa

This transcript is generated automatically by YouTube and has not been checked by a person. It misspells names and mishears words, particularly around Kenyan English and company names, so read it as a guide to the conversation rather than a quotable record. Each timestamp opens the video at that moment.

0:01 [Music] good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome once again to African do episode 7 it's a pleasure to be back uh we have taken a decision to record more in December it's the festive season and I think you'll have more time to to sit down and consume podcasts so we've taken this initiative to record more than one episode so we'll be doing about three episodes this month and we're looking forward to H to it today we have a very very interesting guest uh um I don't know how to describe him but let me say overarchingly he's a Storyteller yes yeah and then after being a Storyteller you can add in the other acronyms he's a Content producer he's a um a producer of of of different types of animated he's an animator he's an illustrator he's an artist and other interesting things that we'll unpark in this episode so my guest today is Chief who comes as as you can hear the very

1:03 interesting name to start with so Chief welcome thank you so much I'm glad to be on the African do podcast excellent and we're glad to have you thank you so we can start by um maybe let me take you back and say that I think the thing that as I was doing my research on you um I start with the fact that you're a lawyer yes and not and not just in words you know you're a lawyer complete trained uni School SCH of law finished eth intake University of Nairobi eth intake yes so maybe you can tell us uh a bit about that how uh from becoming a lawyer you now end up um as a as as a Content producer African enterpreneur and illustrator and all yeah it's quite similar to your last guest actually navalo uh she was both a lawyer and accountant if I remember correctly yes she was and I was the same okay we were doing it simultaneously so it was actually not an uncommon thing

2:00 where you study law in the evening and during the day you're doing Acca accounting or some others would be doing CPA and the idea was that those are two essential pillars of any any corporate organization yes so if you have those you know it's job security that was the thinking of of of the people who advised me okay uh so that's what I did um I graduated 20078 there around that period and uh it was an accident of of of of of timing that I happened to graduate around very tumultuous time in Kenya's history okay so uh the job market wasn't great there was also a lot of time for for introspection and looking around and for me it was also the thing that um you know you've invested your your you know the last five six years if you count also going to Kenya's School of Law yeah thinking about law and the rule of law and of course a bit of that is governance and then you see all of that

2:54 evaporate you see the rule of law evaporate yes and you realize how fickle this thing is that it depends on the consensus of the society as a whole so I limped on for another two years doing my pupil age you know um working a little bit training uh doing various internships but it had already been wounded in my head the the idea that um this was a very stable structure had already been been broken and I had this idea that there's so much knowledge that we are exposed to in the academy you know that is locked out of the of the general public okay you know uh we call ourselves learned friends and you in inside this Ivory Tower and there's there's so much useful information that needed to to get out there you know like our history for example how we ended up where we ended up yes and um I felt that it needs to escape the academy and go into a more popular you know format so

3:47 my first graphic novel which I did in 2010 was actually about that it was it was history so I did a kind of fictionalized history of dead and kimoi yes um called emergency and the whole idea was just to just track his life before the emergency starts in 52 so like being a veteran from the second world war he arrives at the at the railway station and he's trying to find his way and you know like what what leads up to the decision for them to to go to the forest so I was and and and it was very important to me that it'd be done in a comic book format as a graphic novel in a way that's very popular and um and easy for for for people to consume not something that's like a an academic paper so your your you study law yes but you've always been as a child you were Keen graphic you are drawing but at at no time in your childhood and through your Early Education into uni did you think that

4:42 that was a career choice I mean the career did not exist yes um yeah at the time of course and I I would put myself in your bracket as well you know um for us there was just like you could count the career choices on one hand it's lawyer doctor um engineer IST architect Etc the basics and so I can't even really blame my parents we were just taking the options that were available true so by the time I was graduating Kenya had started to open up you know by this time you've already seen the music industry start to open up you have the kalakas you have you know all of these things and then I remember going to sarit Center this was actually in in 2007 the year of my graduation and I go for a talk that's being hosted by Dan mly at the sarit center MH um uh for just a band and they had just released an animated uh music video called the yes yes yes yes I remember flying turtle

5:40 and my mind was just blown Dan is my friend now I always tell him this he can't even believe you know uh and I was like my God these things were not there when I was going in so I started to rethink and I was like life will start to foreclose you know as you graduate you get a family you get children and you know your options start to close close close it's like a a narrowing funnel so I was like before this funnel Narrows to a close I have a few short years in which I can make a radical decision do I want to do this insane thing of becoming an artist or do I want to go ahead and you can imagine my parents were you know they had their misgivings you've invested all this time and money you know you've invested all this time and money going in this direction then you go cartoon you have to draw cartoons you know so they yeah um but I was I was I was quite stubborn about it and I knew

6:34 that I had to make that choice now or the option will not be there in the future so I took that direction and so how do you but how did you then um I I I can see how you you your misgivings about the law were triggered by postelection violence that's 2007 2008 as a Young Man straight out of uni now you've studied the law it's all about order systems you know based on English common law and you're like okay and you come out and you see the imperfections of that because we found ourselves as a nation in this situation and how did you then transition that to kind of a your first story that you're talking about emergency you know is a bit of an untold story you know we hear even dead and kimathi the way was taught to us in school was very I dare say sanitized you know and not so much about the person his history his past uh it's almost like he was a Mau F fighter then so how did

7:33 that how did you connect that those two worlds to start telling those stories that are bit different around that time the book Britain Gulag had been published I think it was around it was 2008 20089 there um there was also histories of the hanged uh so there was all these books and like um people had started to become curious about this history so there was available material for for for us to study and to look so you do from a creative standpoint is that you you you look at all this information put it on a on a timeline and see where the gaps are where the opportunities are for um how do you say um creative license yes in which you can dramatize it and put it into a dramatic format okay so there was all this material becoming available and I think around uh the same time a court case was also taking place yes the famous in the UK yes yeah so all of that was the context in which I was doing

8:28 this yeah it wasn't in vacuum okay yeah so you you you're now you've become a Storyteller yeah but how what was the reception of the first story by the mar was so good it was so good it was good in terms of people wanting to hear the story or good in terms of you being able to monetize it and then say definitely not monetized not monetize the recep good good in terms of uh there was a lot of online enthusiasm reception I used to get tons of comments I did it uh over the space of a month and a half yeah in um I I mean I researched the book for the entire year of 2010 but it got published in October so there was a lot of like buzz around it online even so far as Quest Love Of The Roots if you're a hip-hop fan even even commenting about this so there was a lot of buzz but uh there was no root to monetization at that time yeah and where were you where

9:27 did you how did you distribute it or I I just created website with my friend naabi Wanda he created a website for me and also like really basic we were just teaching ourselves this as we went along like he taught himself after effects in order to make an animated trailer for it okay uh just in one night I saw him do that in one night a Real Genius yeah uh so once that happened because of the buzz that that happened around emergency um I actually got a call from vict andula who was uh doing a comic with the star at the time and he told me hey you know my boss wants to see you so I ended up actually doing a six panel eight six to eight panel comic for the star after that it was called robber Rob yeah and it run for about four years yes but then you know Comics is hard work uh that was good in terms of like I had an income a pretty good income and I was single you

10:17 know I was able to to to pay my bills and have some became an employe yeah I of the pretty much I would say cons the consultant cartoonist so to speak so that's how that's how the the career was able to to proceed but thenly Tak imagine days a week an panel com and you of the story daily daily except the weekend so that's basically 20 days out of a of a month and you're doing that for 4 years so you know I started to burn out and I started to ask myself you know like with this skill that I've that I've started to develop you know um you know cuz comic books are complicated you you're basically doing the environment design the character design you're the you're the screenwriter you're also doing cinematography figuring out how how one panel leads to another yes so it's it takes a tool it's um I wouldn't compare it even to doing an editorial C in which you're doing

11:10 just one image you're doing eight images that are related to each other yes and so I started to think what else is adjacent to this that is close to this that I can transform my skills that wouldn't Burn Me Out to the same degree okay and luckily I met a another animator around this time a guy who I just studied in in in South Africa his name was hatu yeah and were able Kenyan of course yes so we were able to start an animation studio it was called tsunami uh so of course the idea was the same thing like uh you know telling popular storytelling you know we wanted to to tell our own stories drama crime fiction the sort of stuff that we were interested in um and uh just to give you some context a lot of the stories that we that we were growing up consuming about ourselves were mostly NGO funed so it was about you know like um social messaging you know use contra ction type

12:00 of things uh and and you know people audiences are much more sophisticated than we give them credit for people know when they're being preached at Ag and so we didn't want to make that type of media we wanted to make stuff that was just fun yeah um hat was a big love of anime of course and um you know anime heads are really fanatical so that was the energy that we went into into uh this new company with and so I started to move away from Comics I ended up uh uh leaving the the gig with the star to just focus on Comics so what did you do teach yourself because now you to just focus on animation you've moved now to H animation which is computer generated and you have moved away from you're an illustrator so how do you make that transition how so I didn't have to because how to had the skills as an animator and he also had a few friends who are also animators yes so

12:50 using that I was able to leverage my skills yes from the storytelling standpoint from drawing Comics which are basically really elaborate story boards yes um storyboards being like a basically a script that is turned into images okay so using that we were able to combine our skills and now the studio and you started producing yes then so we started producing so now you have transitioned lawyer you you H you have made a fast comic can't monetize yes get a job work four years in that and and now you're starting to figure out you're in the game yeah so to speak so this is around this is around 2013 there between between 2013 and 2016 yeah yeah you have a seat at the table you know the lingo you which table we built the table no table that yeah of course there's no table of an animation type in the market uh but now let's move forward to uh closer to modern day yeah um you

13:49 do tsunami with with with your friend and you're now I would say you're on the journey to mainstreaming in the sense that you can have conversations and what kind of work are you doing so around this time is actually when we met each other um uh I was actually taking on a more producer role the more business side of things looking for clients and hot was more on the creative Direction side okay and those who know me know that I wasn't really well suited to being a producer I mean I I have I understand numbers I understand like balance sheets and all of that but it's not I would it wouldn't be my first choice it's not it's not my first instinct I'm much more on the creative side but someone had to do it yes so I did a lot of that you know um I joined Sun bindas fast forward you know um just basically increasing the networking in the Kenyon corporate scene uh because

14:39 that's where we imagine that's where the capital is that would uh that would be able to you know then people would be interested in in in in funding stories for their companies and that type of thing yeah so um we ended up doing a bit of that you know so we've done all manner of clients you can imagine from doing um information about insurance you know Financial literacy curricular turning that into animation from you know all types of messaging literally everybody needs to to tell a story yes and um visual storytelling is the most effective type of Storytelling I'll give you a really concrete example if you're in uh if you're in like let's say a con a construction site yeah and you have people speaking different languages say you have a Chinese manager you have you know people speaking all different languages can you find a very efficient

15:29 way of telling somebody how to tie a fishing knot mhm you can tell somebody in English which will exclude the non- English speakers you can say it in K which will exclude the non speakers or you can say it in Chinese exclude all the others or you can just have diagrams explaining how to make the fishing n it's so efficient and and you it crosses across all languages all cultures everything so that's the power of visual storytelling and everybody needs that doesn't matter if it's a corporate doesn't matter if it's a social Enterprise everybody needs that even politicians um so we did that for a long time but then what ended up happening is that I went into a crisis I was like what I came into this industry was not to be a tool for various um corporates to use basically I didn't come into to do advertising or this type of thing I came in to do storytelling like pure

16:19 storytelling so it really took us into a crisis so we decided to take a break also and also we found that um what we had imagined or what I had imagined the error that I had made we thought that the Pinnacle was having corporate clients yes but then what you end up learning is that these are not necessarily the people who um best understand the value of our medium yes and they don't necess value both monetary as well as you know um purpose wise yes they don't understand it the most they have the most difficulty understanding why the budgets are as they are why it why it takes as much time as as it does and we found out maybe there's a mismatch maybe this is not where we need to be so I needed to take some time to kind of understand the ecosystem that I was working in and you know what its purpose was so that was during the time that I actually wrote my

17:13 first um like really long graphic novel over 100 pages so was called The Art of unlearning okay cuz I wanted to unlearn all the prejudices and assumptions with which I had come into this industry with and I showed you the manuscript just as we were preparing and during that time also I also took some time I went into an incubator in San Francisco to the US was called Singularity University and I was able to mix with entrepreneurs of all different kinds you know people very far from my field it was a very rigorous um application process very competitive I was even surprised when I made it in cuz I weren't many people from the creative side of things you had biotech people in there you had AI people in there you know uh it was very very early days of drone and um all this different type people from all over the world where are we TimeWise now uh TimeWise this is 2016

18:04 in the summer of 2016 so that that's when I went to San Francisco crisis of conscience is what pushed you there would you say that's what pushed me there cuz actually it was my father who pushed me because he was like um you need to now you need to go back into study you need to study some more you've been doing all these experiments take some time and and do some more studying and this came along around that time so I was very fortunate I I got to learn about like um the Silicon Valley approach to to building businesses and a lot of the things you discussed with Ken um and I learned that I I learned their approach to to entrepreneurship and there are a lot of really useful skills that I learned from that um one thing that they understand really well is how to scale things and how to always think about scale when you're starting you

18:49 know whenever you start anything always be thinking about like how how can it how can it reach more how scale and and there's a structure to that to how exponential growth Works um and and thinking from from from a very early stage always being able to see 10 steps down the line how how it can go on that curve um but then I also had critics to that approach I also um came back from from that with um with challenges like how does how does that approach adapt to this context yes this context of our this context being in Kenya and there Wen many other people from from from Africa there I think there was me there was another South African guy black South African guy and and Egyptian yes that was about it how many are you in the program 78 people wow yes and only three are African and only three are African so um it gave me a different lens into where

19:41 we are what we are doing and it took me a while I never even thought about things like political economy for example to understand like how what I was trying to do as an individual related to what the rest of humanity is doing and what the rest of the the continent is doing because it's not intuitive to think at scale most people their intuition is to think about me and maybe my family it's not intuitive to see how your place in the world is connected to everybody else and to the rest of the economy so that those are some of the things that I thought about and I pondered in my book The Art of unlearning okay okay so it was it was self-published um and you know self-publishing it's really the only way to publish in Kenya when you're doing the type of media that we're doing Like Comics graphic novels because we don't have Publishers here uh the Publishers that we have more focused on KICD

20:31 curricular and you know like and that's where their their bread and butter comes from no no blame on them like if 95% of your revenue is coming from doing school books why do you have to think about anything else so they don't take a risk outside of that so usually when you have uh you know gifted writers people like banga when they come into writing they find themselves in being in the position of a of a Transport company that has to build the road so like had to build quani as a publishing company and you know for it s publishing so far that's quite interesting that you use that analogy because if I digress a bit I'll tell you about a friend of mine who uh an agriculturalist and he used a similar analogy with regards to Kenyan Agriculture and he was saying you know what um you can get into he told it how did he tell it he says okay you can decide to buy a matat you know and you

21:23 run a matat yeah but no one expects you to build a road yes yes while in in kenyaan agriculture that's how he feels we been held back that the infrastructure to do the agriculture well the farmer is expected to create you know the dams and all that there's nowh so it's in so many domains not even even in Tech like um companies that do like you know delivery companies like Sandy and them um it doesn't translate very well from the Silicon Valley model to here because there they have all houses have addresses there's a function like postal Network and all of that whereas here a lot of the time they would have to be you know going up up and down the value chain to build all those all those connecting layers yeah but what one what what I like about what I've heard about your story so far is that you you come across to me as very self-reflective so whether it is intentional or uh like you said the the

22:24 last example you gave it was your dad who triggered you and said that you've done all these experiment um and I think that's something that we need to inate more into ourselves as Africans because um I don't believe that there are any bad experiences I think they just is you know life is provided you don't die agree as long as you're still alive and breathing then life just happens and if you can sit down and say okay I did this I tried this it went like this what did I learn what did I like what didn't I like what can I take out what do I need to build more on and what I've ad about you is that you have always invested in your knowledge you you you never get there so to speak and that's something that's becoming almost a theme in the podcast because um one of the things that we have to accept is this is our continent yes but we are the ones going to change it you know and we

23:19 the and changing it is going to be is going to take some introspection and some of that introspection may not we may not like what we see but it's the reality and if we confront it we can find a way to to around it but now you've gone to Singularity yeah uh you've written your uh uh your out of un learning out of un learning yeah which would be great to see I don't know when it'll be available I'm working on I'm working on a second edition excellent yes as but as self-publishing goes it's it's a little bit slower than I like especially because I hope we get to this yes uh I'm I'm so deep in right now now I'm Head Shoulders Knees and Toes but it's still something I think is important from a knowledge standpoint because it was more for like trying to document the learnings and try trying to put them in a concise format that somebody else even long after I've turned into fossils okay they can still

24:15 learn so you've done you have 2016 Singularity by 2018 I would assume thereabouts you have written your graphic nov you you've published youve you got your head around things now where do you move to from there oh so uh at this point it's good to speak about my wife and also the producer of pulupa Productions when did she come into the picture so she comes into picture around this time when I come back from from the US and I'm introspecting all these things yes so even art of un learning was a lot of the time conversation with her you cuz you need a sounding board to also give this ideas form and I was trying to write the philosophy that would come to underpin pulupa Productions which is created now and freeh movement so actually the last chapter of art of and learning is called freehand movement which is the the philosophy with which we built the the company and basically the key learning

25:07 that I that I that I leave with it you you'll kick me for being so basic yeah the key learning that I that I leave the US with is the importance of purpose okay it is so critical to what we do as creative people yes it is the ultimate so tell us a bit more about your purpose so purpose was what I realized I was doing wrong in my my first attempts at uh doing an animation company is that you were doing business with every Tom Dick har Mary Jane who would walk in and was willing to sign a check really bad mistake because if you're going to tell stories and tell stories in a convincing way you must believe them age these must be stories that resonate with you first and foremost because I feel like um human beings we have mirror neurons even sitting as we are across each other right now speaking you can tell if I try and and and defraud you you know or if I

26:00 try and sell you BS you can tell so you have to be the first person who who believes in what you're saying so that of course precludes um telling stories or interacting with organizations uh telling stories that uh do not resonate with you so we realize that we have to funnel we have to we have to narrow our scope um and and tell the stories that we are we are interested in and myself I'm really interested in um ecology culture um and those were the things around which you know because my dad really loved trees yes you know everywhere everywhere he went he turned it into a forest okay you know we even we even have a side hustle of doing bees and it's all thanks to the fact that he planted so many trees in KY okay you know that uh it made bees thrive in that context so I wanted to to do stories that resonated with this that can promote African culture and that can

26:53 promote African ecology and you know just make a paradise where we are so how do you how do you then take that purpose which you have discovered about yourself and and and translate it into freehand movement yes how freehand Movement we did a lot of work with social Enterprises we did a lot of work with people who were doing um uh uh food sovereignty for example one of my of my graphic novels which I shared with you this morning the blind spot was all about that it was a political drama about food sovereignty about this this um this place called kajora where there's a revolution thaten happens and the revolution is betrayed and and food is at the center of it okay um uh I do a lot of and also it precludes the the organization that you not want to work with you know like if there's an arms manufacturer for example I wouldn't want to work with such a company you see if

27:43 you if you're just looking at the bottom line you don't care whether it's an arms manufacturer a fossil fuel company or whatever uh so that was the main thing that we did with with the freehand movement where we had a bit more focus and to our pleasant surprise was much more successful much more successful there money in of course that's the irony that when you take your eye off um what you think is is the shortest route to money when you take your eye of that and you prioritize purpose you're working with people who are aligned you're working with people who are invested in the story they're less fussy about budgets uh you're able to do the type of work you want to do the way you do it and your quality goes up did you find them or did they find you you find each other okay they look for you and you a lot of the time it's them through word of mouth so we ended up doing a lot of

28:33 that and then also by 2019 we become parents this is the big shift yeah in all this time I've been working uh creatively I've never thought about kids content it's so ironic you're working in animation but you've never thought about kids but I become a parent Myself by the time my son is 2 years old there's a crisis in the house we have nothing to show them yeah in terms of content I'm going online I just I'd never thought about it going online we're looking and the closest thing that we can find to content we want to show our kids is coming from West Africa coming from Congo bukina comp those who have kids uh you might know about it's basically African songs a lot of them are in lingala and French but for us it was the closest thing to to to where we are in East Africa that we were like my God we call ourselves silicon Savannah we can

29:21 do this you know we have the songs we have the skills we know how to animate we can do this so uh that that's now what turned our gaze now toward kids you know that we need to we need to do something for our kids um and uh we came up with the idea of Uli and Tata you know uh iulie being our partner manu's daughter yes our partner Manu is a wildlife filmmaker animator he's just a creative octopus like he he he he he learns so many different things and he's also a National Geographic fellow his daughter is called ulie yeah and our son is called we his nickname was Tata I named him after my late father uh so Tata in in in kissim me's father okay so basically we just made a series about our kids and um I can tell you a bit of the story if we have time that yeah uh so basically the story of Willian Tata is that they they're at home one day it's it's a very hot day uh so they're

30:17 bored they go into the store to look for something to play with and they find this really old rusty uh musical instrument not Rusty but Dusty and they play them it's a nuto and a drum and when they play these old instruments they they they summon a a magical bird out of the sky yeah and this bird is like oh you you know it's been so long nobody's played these instruments that's why I've come you know uh since your great grandparents played these instruments and this bird takes them all around Kenya where they learn songs from all the different communities and they learn also about the the the culture of those different places okay mhm um I think uh I'll now let's go deeper into UL andata I wanted to save it for the end but now it's as good a time as any yeah because I think the way you're doing it is quite uh I would say what's the right word is it it's not Noble it's it's it's quite impressive

31:15 and what impresses me about it it's not just that you're um teaching African nursery rhymes for me what captivates me is the how M you're doing it that uh if I watched episode one I watched the Kaka episode I watched the lamu episode and I watched the kifi yeah the manani episode but you actually go to these places yeah yes and you capture the stories and record yes local people yes singing MH the the the nursery rhymes so in in when you watch the YouTube channel or the the the Ulan Tata on YouTube or wherever else you watch it you what you hear singing the N is actually children from those communities in some cases in other cases like with the kisumu episode because there are so many um lu musicians resident here in Nairobi it's very easy to to to be able to have a studio here in Nairobi and get uh musicians to come in much more difficult with with other communities who don't have as developed

32:24 a music industry yes so with the case of gabra for example in the chal desert yes we had to actually sign um uh work for high agreements with the the Guardians of of the children and actually get the music from The Source okay yeah so you cannot always you don't always have access you know with the studio recording facility so you have to take a uh te you have to take a team there and actually record at the source so tell me about the thinking behind that what did you see in the capturing of those Nary Rhymes why is it important you know why why why should we mhm care that that these nursary Rhymes are are there or not yeah so uh my partner Sarah is psychologist actually yes and one thing that she always speaks about is how important a sense of belonging and rootedness is for the mental well-being of a child growing up okay yeah to feel that I have a right to be

33:18 here MH I belong here you know I don't have to make excuses for my existence exactly that's so important for a child growing up to be to be rooted and strong and Ed as an adult but when you are always consuming media that does not you see you do not see yourself you do not see the environment that you're that that you're from you don't see the world around you the subliminal message that you get is that um I don't really belong here which is not great for our mental health yeah um and that goes very deep it goes down if you want to even speak about it it even goes to uh the religious imagery that we are surrounded by yes especially with um with with Christian religion um on the back of matatus everywhere you see the image of God that that that is presented is a blonde person yeah um so we now first and foremost we wanted to remedy that

34:13 for our own children and we know that this what is what is for us is you know human beings we are not that dissimilar yes we all have the same common Challenge and I would hear this complaint constantly from my cousins and friends who are parents oh we don't have we don't have something for our children I was like I I cannot join that chorus of complaints because I actually have the skills to do something about it so I cannot participate in that we actually have to think about okay how can we do it if it's Capital how do we go about raising the capital to be able to have a team and it's not easy anybody who knows about animation we'll tell you it's a team spot yes nobody animates an Ulan Tata on their own we have a team of 35 people okay that's everything from music you have the field music team that actually goes to the location and

34:56 Records the music on sound you have the stud music team that is that is working on the studios here in Nairobi doing the music production we work with fancy Fingers of sa Soul yes he he he does all the the mastering and you know directing of the music we a really talented team um Tim Umali who who who who does the songs themselves who composes the songs um we benefited from the from the legacy of Kabul and what taboo was able to do the field recording so there's all that background um man there's so many people I'm to go down names cuz end up leing some just look at the credits then you have the the the studio animation production team from the storyboard artists visual development rigging the animation team also the post-production people um so it's a it's a huge pipeline we call it the pipeline and one and one person hands a baton to the another who

35:47 hands a baton to the another who hands a baton to the other so it's it's a large group of people it's evident from what you say about ul and Tata yeah that uh it's going to be big in for me but um it may not be now MH yeah but I can see that it's going to be big MH so how do you live how do you live yeah you know because the production of Ulan Tata is funded yes uh so our pilot episode was funded by the Kenya film commission okay shout out to Kenya film commission EX in 2022 and uh once we had the the pilot we able to now ship it around to to raise forther Capital so um we got advice quite early on that what you need to do is go to marketplaces so at the time there was a Marketplace called discop in in Kali in Rwanda so we you know got on a plane but on the way to the plane we hear that the that the that the discop has been canceled the event has been canceled that time you've already bought

36:50 your tickets you're in the line waiting to go to the aircraft and we were like let's go you know let's just go let's see what happens there are probably other people there who have already gone so we just and you know just um in in in Kali moving around in the hotels we we happened to meet s who was the cultural attache of the French Embassy at the time yes and uh uh we we met him we pitched him and we had nothing for another you know 34 months um we did events uh we we did a launch where we did a screening of the pilot invited people to anen Nairobi small um ouse Cinema and we screened it to a whole bunch of investors not too dissimilar than what you do when you have a a minimum viable product agre you you have to show it to people so after a while s got back to us months later and he told us yo I might have something for you and so creation Africa was able to

37:39 fund seven episodes okay uh in addition also I told you that uh Manu was a National Geographic uh is a National Geographic Explorer so he was also eligible for National Geographic uh grants which is what allowed us to go outside of Kenya and go to Tanzania and do episodes with the hadab community and also epe inuk so this is how we've been building because you Cann MTI until you actually have a full season yeah yeah you need you need a full season what a full season a full season would ideally be 52 episodes okay so getting there there's a lot there's a lot of funding that it takes to get there and what we are also doing is making other media like explainer videos trivia episodes where they where they where kids can going and okay now you've watched an episode about kifi what is the forest that will and Tata had a picnic in is it is it a the

38:35 Mau Forest B the arabo sokoke forest or C Kaka Forest you know like really simple question like those so um so all that content also increases the amount of of overall content that we have it's like uh quencher juice how you can take the same concentrate and have many cups of juice agreed uh so using that now we'll be able to distribute and now on the distrib I question there was another challenge unfortunately the ambition that so many animators have in Kenya is to is to one day work for for Netflix or Disney or any of the big broadcasters but the but the complication is that a lot of them are not available to kids like Disney plus is not available to most kids in Africa you need you need a VPN to watch Disney plus so there's that irony that what we Define a success is is being on those platforms but those platforms do not have a a sign presence

39:28 in Africa if your goal is for is for children you remember how we spoke about the goal is to is for kids to see themselves represented in Med now you have to make a choice to go on the platforms that are available to to our kids so starting next week will be on ail Network yes uh a Kil Network here in Kenya which is free to Air for all kids in Kenya but it's non-exclusive so we'll also be available on YouTube and for that we need a YouTube strategy so every every couple of days in a week we have a a YouTube strategy to who who we consult with we also had a grant from um um a fre creative which was just dedicated to distribution and and uh marketing and uh so the whole point of these meetings is like how do we um work the algorithm the YouTube algorithm uh to eventually monetize at a significant level and of course we also thinking about things

40:19 like merchandise and everything Downstream from that because a lot of the the really big animation Brands and we learned this from from learning from Asia as well um as as chairman of the animation Association I get a chance also to meet um many different players including the the last was the Asian uh there was this company called um uh when I remember the name I'll tell you but basically they do like 300 million views in a month uh for their Channel and they don't even they don't even consider their YouTube views their primary um their primary business model is toys you know so they start they start from their toys and work backwards and learned that from from the Japanese so we might not necessarily go as aggressive as that as working back and but it is uh something to think about that everything is Downstream from first and foremost

41:09 making a compelling story making a compelling universe that people want to inhabit once you have that then all these other business models open up to you you know making pencil cases making games making apps making toys but you cannot have any of that Downstream until you have a compelling story that children actually want to spend time on and I think that's what we have with Ulan Tata so let me take you back to to two things that I I want us to just touch on uh let's talk about Capital yeah then let's talk about EOS system yes yeah so capital from the perspective of you you're in a space that is capital intensive yes you know to produce a single episode is more complex and more expensive than most people it's quite think you know it's not just drawing on a piece of paper and and there you go you know so how have you overcome those challenges and what are your sentiments about the whole capital

42:11 structure and ecosystem M um I guess do you see yourself you know we we've we've talked about the importance for kids you know to see themselves what's been your experience as an African entrepreneur in seeing yourself in the capital structure in the ecosystem you talk about the goal being to get to Netflix or to Disney but are we there are we at that table maybe we can speak a bit more about that and see where that takes us H um I mean very much like the other guests who who've come on Africa and do yeah uh capital is a problem across the board it's a challenge across the board um you know Ken spoke about it in in in in the tech sector a lot of the capital is not Kenyan or African um Naval also spoke about it in manufacturing and if it is the case in tech and and and Manufacturing you can imagine how much how much more intens is in Creative which is generally considered a very low

43:12 priority um so how how how creative film and storytelling gets funded in in other places like if you think of say Europe for example it's very heavily State subsidized very heavily um we're just not on the same we're not in the same Stratosphere most uh filmmakers get their start from State funding even here in Kenya we are indirect beneficiaries of State funding from European taxpayers a lot of the time if you think of like the contributions that the French make or the Germans make with G Institute and rest that those are European taxpayers yes who are paying for that so basically our creative industry in Kenya is subsidized by other taxpayers in other countries and why is this it's because they understand that what we said in Psychology if you're raising a nation if you if you're concerned about nation building it starts in childhood doesn't

44:07 start with I don't come to Leonard if Leonard already has calcified prejudices you know ethnic prejudices and all these things if they already calcified you're not going to do much about that if you have any dream of ever building a nation it has to start young so the states take on that responsibility there are some things that we have no business talking profit about yeah uh I I I don't I don't uh absolve myself of the responsibility to build a a viable business and we are doing that however if you're talking about things like education those are not profitable things yeah we have a country of 50 million people many of those children are in Far flung very remote uh places where they they cannot afford school fees yeah let alone affording to to to to pay for an app so what ends up happening when when entrepreneurs come into to the education space I see this a lot with like edte

45:00 edtech startups is that you end up serving an already over served population you end up already serving the same population that goes to private schools for example those are the same Choice exactly they have an abundance there's an over supply for for that very very narrow segment and for and for a majority lowincome population like ours they don't need another app they don't need another they already have so much if your goal really is to reach kids in in myona in marsabit County then you're not talking profit that has to be that has to start from purpose like is is is our purpose actually to reach those kids same thing applies with healthcare for example do we have an over supply of healthcare options for people who are willing to pay what options are there for those who who do not and on and on and on so that goes much that goes back into public interest um uh public goods discussion so if I he

45:57 you right what you're saying Chief is that uh um as a nation MH uh we need to rethink how we fund some things yes it cannot it can it cannot be that we are just trying to make this economy and and and build that um and you take me back to school to UNI in my uni days uh where I learned that um the the early um what we call the European city states yeah yes where the states were the founders of the Arts yes because Commercial Success was actually based fast in a way of thinking yes and that way of thinking started with that what you call nation building or building yeah and that starts at childhood so you're basically saying that it is in our interest to fund our creative sector better because it is what will lead us to Greater Commercial Success everybody whatever sector you're in you are all beneficiaries of the cultural output like when I was in San Francisco for

47:12 example we once went on a camping trip to to to the forest there in California the the big S and uh I was in the car with I I had a Dutch friend in there there was a Mexican friend um uh there was another guy uh just different different people in in the same van and as a bonding experience as we were in the van going for camping everybody shares the music from oh you play play a song from where you're from play a song from where you're from play a song you're in the food side of things I'm sure this question comes up when you meet um if you meet if you meet chefs if you meet chefs from other parts of the world they want to know what do you people eat where you're from you know um are you going to make them uh I don't know Pizza yes exactly you want to show them you know where you're from and these are these are common goods these are these are public goods that we share

48:02 and I don't know if you're familiar with the whole concept of the tragedy of Commons mhm the tragedy of Commons is that there are certain shared resources that we all benefit from everyone wants to maximize their their their extraction of those common goods but nobody invests in them in building them you know and those are things like water for example you know those are things like air those are things like our culture we all benefit but because there is no individual profit that you're going to extract from it nobody is investing back in it and that space has to be occupied by the state the state just being our common Kitty as as as a nation we have to invest in that there's nothing else to say about that because there are something that are never going to be profitable education for the masses of of the k population will never be profitable I can tell you that for free it can never

49:00 be a enter it can never be what will the only thing you can do is just serve a segment of the a tiny wealthy or middle middle to upper class segment of the population that's all you can do yeah yeah it's interesting you mentioned that because it came up again in naval's podcast with Ender where if if you look at if you listen to her in the beginning she talks about her trigger and you realize that H um Sports mhm yeah there are some elements of sports in Kenya that have become very I dare say elitist you know you you like um my kids are swimmers active swimmers the swimming circuit is is is is is tough you know you can't randomly be a very good swimmer you need some resources to swim in Kenya and that's sad because uh the infrastructural investment is big and we need pathway roads as well roads yeah that's that's another public good exactly exactly so um here you go you uh

50:06 are now ul and Tata is alive and well but I think uh freehand movement is also uh still still active very much so yes and um maybe I can just double a bit into freehand movement and ask how do you um the purpose that purpose that you have because you're producing content um how do you how does that translate from a monetary perspective into a successful commercial Enterprise that's able to pay you I know you work with your with with your wife and and uh so this is like a family business yeah uh in that you're both earning your keep from there but how do you ensure that you're able to do this successfully and still uh meet your purpose which you're very clear on I think the two are fused yes there needs not to be any conflict between purpose and uh and and profit yeah ideally mhm uh there should not be a conflict like uh if somebody is a farmer I'm the son

51:02 of uh of of farmers for example you making food it's good for for the community and for yourself and you can sell your Surplus and and make money okay so there's no conflict there okay uh freehand is more focused on adult oriented uh content and it's uh mostly client client based so we work with organizations uh different different groups who who come to us and they want their message translated it's graphic novels animation that type of thing but it's more focused toward an adult audience whereas pulupa is focused more to toward a younger audience I love the name by the way I I meant to ask where did that name come from it sounds like something like something is falling you know yeah yeah it's it's manu's Mom who came up up with it we wanted something playful that's accessible and and it doesn't really have a meaning it means what it does to and it's it's common in

51:52 our way because people you know P okay anguka in anguka yeah okay great so for that uh UL anata has been uh mostly funded yeah uh but then now that we are publishing it other people are realizing oh my God there's a there's a pipeline in Kenya something that uh was not necessarily obvious before and now uh we are coming into a lot of co-productions where people come and they want to produce their stuff with us I'm not at Freedom to mention specifically which those are but there are some very recognizable recognizable big names coming from nor America excellent who are also doing with us yeah uh hopefully after time I'll be at Liberty to disclose great and and and and that that that earlier before we started recording the podcast we're talking about the power of having a seat at the table yes yeah yes and I think what you have just described right there with pulupa and

52:46 the potential Partnerships that are coming not potential current current okay the current Partnerships that uh have evolved in this in this space speaks to that yes so maybe we can speak a bit about where you currently are and what the future looks like for for pulupa and also freehand movement St yeah I think I would even widen it to even speak about the animation ecosystem as a whole because I also am I'm chair of the animation Association of Kenya yes yes and uh really what we really what we want to do is make a strong use case with Ulan Tata to demonstrate that we can make these in Kenya because one of the strong arguments that we were receiving at the start uh from from from other people was that why are you bothering to make this in Kenya your costs are going to be so high you have to do you have to do training as well as make why not just Outsource it to India

53:41 or or you know that type of thing and so many of the times what you hear being advertised as African animations aren't really made here and a lot of time the ownership isn't here so it's African in terms of like yes the content of the subject might involve Africa you know and you might hire a few voice actors but structurally it's not so we wanted to change that and the only way to change that is to go in into that Commons invest you know one person would have to make that sacrifice and actually invest in building the ecosystem which is what we try to do with Ulan Tata um actually having a team of animators who are trained and used to working in a pipeline and then you can be able to to Outsource and do this and then once we've demonstrated that we can bring our cost down into the India range which would be about $3,000 a minute if you can for for like 2D animation if you can

54:34 get it down into that range 3,000 they can do anything between $3,000 and $10,000 once we in that playing range then now we are contenders and there are so many people who want to produce here because we are great English speakers we we get the humor which is is not always the case in a lot of Southeast Asia okay a really big uh a really big Outsourcing destination is uh Philippines because Philippines both have English Advantage as well as being able to understand the humor which is not necessarily the case with with China China they are they're super fast but they they'll struggle with the English so in the case of India they might not be getting the the the the humor for whatever reason I don't know why it is so like people don't know but Kung Fu Panda was entirely made in India I would say over 90 something per of all the big Hollywood animations that

55:24 you hear about am made in in Asia Southeast Asia most yeah um Tom anderi is made in Philippines a lot of it although the IP holder is is in Canada I believe so now that uh uh wages are rising in Southeast Asia and it's becoming much more competitive the the next destination that you know folks are looking at is East Africa so East Africa I think has a huge potential for for for moving into that space also doing um uh service work and joining the the the the the global animation ecosystem because we are a global ecosystem our uh our training like we trained with uh with an animation company in France rubika it's very much a a global ecosystem and the sooner we can we we can plug into that then the whole ecosystem can rise and and you know animation is yes it's challenging but it's not as challenging as surgery and Kenya we have no problem

56:18 training surgeons so excellent so we just have to we we just have to make that demonstration which was a strong purpose for doing oata and doing it at a high quality and um if I were to look into the crystal ball I would say 20 years from now I would say we would be plugged into not even 20 even less I would say 10 years I've been surprised by what's happened in in the past year so wow yeah H Chief what a fabulous conversation thank you very much for honoring us with your presence my pleasure uh and ladies and gentlemen iul and Tata on YouTube uh YouTube channel uh subscribe watch the episode I know he says they for kids but I started and four episodes in I hadn't stopped so even adults you'll be able to enjoy them quite brilliant storytelling great to see our um African traditional nursery rhymes being captured for posterity and chief uh maybe you can have a parting

57:16 shop for the guests anything that you feel you want them to know about both freehand movement and and pulupa Productions and uh wow what what a pleasure having you with us thank you thank you for hosting me if I have any Parting Shot I would say it's that it's now time this is 2024 it's now time for us to go beyond the very easy platitude that we need more African stories you will not find anybody who will disagree with that you can walk onto the street and say oh do we need African stories everybody will say yes now we need to actually invest and I feel like that's where we'll actually make progress and I'm glad to see that there that there are people who are making that investment but we would like to see much more uh African capital involved in this so yeah and for those who are just interested go to Ula and enjoy yourself yes great so H that I want to emphasize and magnify

58:09 that plea for the African Capital to to listen to us and what we are saying about uh our plea to look local in terms of finding opportunities one of the things we have set out to do here on African do is tell more stories and hope hopefully C capture the magnitude of the opportunity for investing in all things African ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for being with us for the past hour and we look forward to having you with us again on episode 8 [Music]